The Biden administration's director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is leaving his job.
Tae Johnson has been serving in the role of acting director since the start of the Biden presidency, which has reimagined ICE's traditional mission to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.
Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas said Johnson was "instrumental in advancing many of DHS’s critical missions, including the enforcement of our country’s immigration laws and our work to dismantle terrorist and criminal organizations."
Under Biden, ICE agents have had their hands tied, resulting in a historic drop in deportations even as border crossings have reached record highs.
Mayorkas credited Johnson with helping to "transform" the agency "by focusing its resources on public safety and national security.”
"I am grateful to Tae Johnson for his service to ICE, the Department, and the nation. Mr. Johnson has been an integral member of ICE’s leadership team through multiple administrations,” Mayorkas said.
In a farewell message, Johnson touted the "tremendous work" the agency has accomplished over the past two and a half years.
The Biden administration has controversially pushed to limit deportation and arrests to only those people living in the country illegally who the administration considers threatening.
A source within ICE told the Daily Caller that morale at the agency has been low.
“Agents don’t feel valued, we feel like all these illegals have more rights and priorities than us, than the American people. Changing ‘leadership’ is not going to fix this crisis. Is this his way of washing his hands and passing the problem down to the next ‘leader’?" the official said.
Johnson is the second top immigration official immigration official to bail recently after Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz announced his resignation days ago. In other words, the top officials responsible for border enforcement and interior enforcement are now gone.
Granted, there wasn't much enforcement going on to begin with: hundreds of thousands have been already released into the country's interior without court dates over the past couple of years, and some of those who are receiving court dates don't have to show up until 2035.
With Biden officials boasting about a recent drop in border crossings, the shakeup in immigration is sure to stoke speculation about what's coming this summer. What do these agents know that the rest of America doesn't?
